Two more Big Brother luminaries are making their way back into the house for the franchise’s upcoming Big Brother: Reindeer Games all-stars mini-season. EW can exclusively report that Frankie Grande and Danielle Reyes will be competing for the $100,000 prize during the six episode, 10-day event that begins Dec. 11 on CBS.
Their inclusion is not a big surprise seeing as how Frankie and Danielle were two of the three former players (along with Britney Haynes) who first unleashed a “Time Laser” upon the house at the outset of the recently completed Big Brother season 25. (Feel free to watch those shenanigans in the video above). They then returned at the end of the season, during which the Time Laser malfunctioned yet again and somehow, I guess, was responsible for this entire Reindeer Games thing??? (Look, I just report this stuff.)
Danielle made her Big Brother mark in a big way back on season 3 of the series, when she rode a secret alliance with Jason Guy all the way to the end. Unfortunately for her, jurors at that point were allowed to watch the entire show before voting for the winner, and were upset upon seeing what Danielle was saying about them in the Diary Room (including repeatedly calling Roddy Mancuso “the Devil”). After Danielle lost the jury vote to Lisa Donahue, Big Brother immediately changed the rules to no longer allow jurors to watch such footage before voting.
Danielle returned for the first Big Brother: All-Stars (season 7) and was immediately seen as one of the biggest threats in the house, yet she still made it all the way to sixth place in the game.
The brother of singer pop star Ariana Grande, Frankie competed on season 16 of the show and was a member of the Bomb Squad and Detonators alliances. After an up-and-down relationship with his alliance-members, Frankie eventually placed fifth on the season. He then appeared on a celebrity season of Big Brother in the U.K., coming in sixth place.
Danielle and Frankie join competitors Taylor Hale (winner of Big Brother 24), Cameron Hardin (season 25), Josh Martinez (winner of season 19), Cody Calafiore (season 16, winner of season 22), Nicole Franzel (season 16, winner of season 18, season 22), Xavier Prather (winner of season 23) and their aforementioned Time Laser partner-in-crime Britney Haynes (season 12 and 14).
When Cameron was asked by EW a few hours after the Big Brother 25 finale if he would be inclined to participate on Reindeer Games if invited, the contestant seemed unsure. “I don’t know about the Reindeer Games thing,” he said then. “That’s pretty tight timing. If they ask me to do that, I’m going to have to do some soul-searching, but it’s going to be very, very hard for me to say no to something like that.” And it seems that not unlike Danielle and Frankie, he did NOT say no.